


Second Best

by falsteloj



Category: Young Dracula
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-18
Updated: 2011-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-27 12:12:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falsteloj/pseuds/falsteloj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ingrid has never been willing to settle.</p><p>(I have a ton more YD stuff - you can find story summaries, etc, by clicking <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/512861/chapters/27201609">HERE</a>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Best

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AriadnesThread](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriadnesThread/gifts).



Ingrid refused to settle for being second best. She fought against it back in Transylvania, when Vlad was given the better cape, and the bigger crypt, and all the priceless family heirlooms. And she fought against it in Stokely, whenever the boys so much as looked at another girl in her presence, and when Vlad was handed everything she had ever wanted.

Their mother couldn’t care less if she were dead or alive, and their father wasn’t much better. She tried so hard, too hard, and when Will was taken from her she decided that she wasn’t going to make that mistake any longer.

Nobody bothered to ask what she did with those missing years, and she couldn’t see any reason why she ought to tell them. Vlad wouldn’t be able to stomach it, and it suited her just fine for their father to continue to underestimate her.

Because she had seen things neither of them could imagine; hopeless wimpires, the pair of them. Rivers of blood, and the dying gasps of men who in life had believed they were better than women, superior. She had met vampiresses who put the bloodthirstiest tyrants of lore to shame, and watched pathetic excuses for vampires eking out a subsistence on the streets. Weak and emaciated, surviving on nothing but the blood of rodents.

Were it not for the family name, she was certain that Vlad would be among them.

Vlad always had to be the good guy, the hero, and she hated that she had to be indebted to him when she fell ill, along with the half fang. Erin sat with her as she lay there, wasted and vulnerable, but she didn’t take the opportunity to usurp her and, in her fevered dreams, Ingrid concocted a future where they fought together for Vampiress Liberation.

It couldn’t last, of course it couldn’t. Vlad took her attention and her devotion, the same way he had taken everything, and though she had never given into it before, Ingrid found herself wrapped tight in her shroud, thinking of Will and sobbing into her coffin lining.

Bertrand got the best of her, and the Count told her he wished she had never existed, for what felt like the millionth time. Erin ignored her, mistrusting, and she acted as though it meant nothing to her.

“You’re not the person I thought you were,” Erin told her one night, when she was frustrated at being confined to the chair and in a fouler mood than usual. The candlelight softened Erin's features, put colour in her cheeks and made her look more like the breather she must once have been, and Ingrid summoned up her coldest tone, just to make Erin hurt, when she said,

“Of course I’m not, I’m a vampire goddess.”

Their mother didn’t spare her a backwards glance, as usual, and Renfield refused to jump to her orders, no matter how much she threatened him. Vlad ground her dreams of overpowering him into the dirt when he emerged from the blood mirror room, and Ramanga swore his undying allegiance to her brother over and over, half crazed and hysterical.

Vlad left her outside in the sun to burn, and even Wolfie crawling into her lap, sticky hands curled into her own, failed to incite a reaction. It was like nothing she had ever experienced because she had always known what vampiresses with more experience had told her, that the only way to deal with sorrow was to turn it into anger. She had sworn revenge on Slayerkind for Will’s death, and even as a child had ground garlic dust into the hands of the vampire who had been unable to salvage her favourite party dress.

Miss McCauley’s therapist taught her what she should have been able to see all along. She was important, special. She didn’t need any man to validate it. Bertrand couldn’t hide his shock when he failed in his mission, and she smiled sweetly at him, pitying. She wouldn’t be stupid enough to get caught before she was good and ready.

Erin’s secret outed and, though she kept it to herself, it only made her go up in Ingrid’s estimations. Because Erin was devious and cunning, and it seemed the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree when it came to what constituted a partner’s desirable qualities. It made her stomach flutter when it became clear Erin knew her plans, and what she was up to, and even as Vlad snivelled into her shoulder she thought of the dreams she had had, and what an excellent asset to the cause Erin could be.

Things didn’t quite work out as expected and Bertrand smirked when it was all over, whispered,

“Better luck next time.”

She didn’t respond, didn’t need to. Because the book might have been a no-go but the experience had been a learning curve. Vlad was just the same as the rest of them, could spin a pretty web of promises but would never honour them. Not that it mattered. She now knew exactly where to hurt him.

It was so easy it was almost obscene, and Erin told her she wasn’t afraid of her, and that she knew she’d never change, even as the other girl’s racing pulse and quickened breathing told her otherwise. Ingrid trailed her fingers over Erin’s possessions, because it felt personal, intimate.

“That was exactly what I told Ryan you would say about us becoming friends,” she said, like they were having a perfectly normal conversation. “He doesn’t share your reservations.”

Erin pulled a face, sucked in a breath in order to rant and lecture, and Ingrid bit back a smile at the ease of her victory. Because though she had suspected she hadn’t been certain, yet here was the proof, the scent of the emotion thick in the air and undeniable. No matter what she might say to deny it, Erin was jealous of her brother.

And that was how it started. Cold and dark and twisted. Erin was the one to come to her, jaw squared with determination, and Ingrid goaded her further, describing in too much detail everything she and Ryan had done together until Erin snapped and shoved her back against her dresser, pressing their lips together.

It was warm, shockingly so, and Ingrid kissed back, one long fingernailed hand coming up to tangle in her hair, just to show her how to do it properly. She bit at Erin’s lip, and Erin pulled her closer, and when they finally parted Erin was flushed and breathless, and Ingrid revelled in the swirl of confusion pouring off of her.

“I shouldn’t have…” Erin started, trailing off helplessly. Ingrid folded her arms across her chest, refused to be drawn on the subject. Feeling guilty wasn’t something she had time for. They looked at each other for a long moment before Erin left, and nobody commented on her bruised hand or her broken dresser, though the pain lasted for days, acting as an insistent reminder.

That might have been the end of it, or then it might not have been. Circumstances threw them together before she could make a decision, stuck together in her father’s dreary sitting room while Vlad discussed the possibility of a truce with the people he thought mattered – men, all of them.

Erin was skittish around her, wouldn’t meet her gaze, and Ingrid rose to the challenge. Pushed, and pushed, until Erin refused to sit back and take it and, afterwards, they both knew that this time they wouldn’t be able to pretend it had never happened. Instead it happened again, and again and again, and while they were with each other Ryan and Vlad and everything else faded into the background.

It reached the point where she was no longer in control of it, wanted more than perhaps Erin was willing to give her, and she hated that she didn’t completely understand why, and that she couldn’t force things to play to her advantage, so pressed bruises into the skin of Erin’s arms when they moved together, just to release some of the frustration.

“I could bite you,” she said one night, because Bertrand was always scuttling about and she wasn’t dumb enough not to realise that it was only a matter of time before somebody found out about it. “Your dress sense would improve as a vampire.”

“You won’t,” Erin said simply, fixing her hair in the dusty mirror. They fell into silence, slightly uncomfortable, until Erin finally met her eye and said,

“I’m never going to be another Will, Ingrid.”

She was still rolling the words around and around in her mind when Vlad appeared uninvited. He looked murderous, power charging the air around him, but his eyes were red, and Ingrid didn’t have to ask to know he had been crying.

“What have I ever done to you?” He asked, voice shaking, and her witty retorts died on her lips, the anger and the rage giving way to something far less familiar. He left without hurting her, though it must have cost him, and Ingrid sat on the lip of her coffin, stared into the middle distance.

Perhaps she hadn’t quite thought it through.

Perhaps being second best was not a fate deserved by anyone.

**Author's Note:**

> *chews nails nervously* I hope this is something like you were imagining, and not just an unrelenting angst fest! I've really enjoyed writing it, especially as I very rarely write from Ingrid's POV. Happy Yuletide! 
> 
> As ever, feel free to chat / hit me with prompts over on Tumblr [@serenwib](http://serenwib.tumblr.com/) or Twitter [@falsteloj](https://twitter.com/falsteloj). :)


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